Bringing the butcher back

NEW YORK CITY – In between strings of sausage Brent Young took a sip from a sparkly blue drink and firmly set the clear glass on the aluminum counter beside his sausage maker. He glanced up and smirked at me as I videotaped. "Hey, Adrienne, have a sip of that!"

"What is it?"

"Try it."

One tiny gulp, and it turns out Young drinks mouthwash while he grinds and encases sausage at The Meathook.

"Why would you do that? Why would you trust him?" yelled Ben Turley, his cheery henchman from the dishwashing room.

Sara Bigelow, another fast-handed sausage twister, commented, "Everyone likes mouthwash – just not pre-gargled stuff."

All of the butchers, with one other man, Tom Mylan, work for The Brooklyn Kitchen in the butcher section of the store called The Meathook on Frost Street next to the BQE near the L train.

The store opened last November, and it is thriving.

The butcher shop only uses sustainable, grass-fed meat from small upstate New York farms, drawing in a lot of people from the foodie community in Brooklyn.

While there are other butcher shops in the neighborhood of Williamsburg – even other organic ones – the people at The Meathook look to help people in their cooking endeavors without intimidating them.

"Often [the butchers] will scribble on the wrapper the basic cooking instructions for the meat," said Lila Dobbs, the produce and dry goods manager.

Young said he likes to help people put a meal together with a $20 piece of meat and a bottle of wine. He said people are able to save $100 by cooking at home instead of eating out. It's cheaper and still tasty.

On a quiet Monday afternoon Young and Bigelow made string after string of sausage, enjoying each other's banter.

A man in his early thirties walked in, and he was the only customer in the store because the rush hour doesn't come until later in the afternoon.  

Walking up to the meat counter, the man said that he'd never been to the shop before.

Young lifted his gaze from his focused sausage making to offer a single smile and the welcoming words, "We heard you were coming."

Young explained that The Meathook is eight blocks from the L train, so anyone who goes to the shop wants to be there.

"People come here looking for something specific. It's like somebody might go to a special record store across town to buy a specific LP," said Young. It's not the meat that they're specifically after, but the experience of trying something new.

After working for a while at Marlowe & Daughters, also in the Williamsburg area, the three men decided to try their own thing. And because The Brooklyn Kitchen, an edgy baking store on Lorimer Street, a couple blocks southeast of the location now on Frost was making their new bigger location, the three collaborated with The Brooklyn Kitchen crew creating an eclectic new cooking experience.

The three kept a steady beat of working at the butcher shop, skillfully completing tasks as banter floated around the sausages they make.

Quietly they gave each other a hard time. Turley teased Young about being a charmer. Young gave Bigelow a hard time about her job and failings.  Bigelow ridiculed Turley about his lack of work ethic.

Young said that when the four of them – Young, Turley, Mylan, and Bigelow – get together the place gets slightly unproductive. Ben calls the atmosphere a "little rambunctious."

"Dumb ideas are amplified when we are together," said Young.

The Meathook sells other things. Out-of-print cookbooks, organic vegetables, vintage print aprons, and bulk grains line the walls of the large ware-house space that is now home to The Brooklyn Kitchen.

Three iPods rest on the shelf of cookbooks, and the butchers constantly boggle up the music to create a new energy. Folksy, techno, or grunge music seeps out of the butcher shop in the back.

Neko Case's guttural singing voice fills the space one moment, but a Moby-like disco guy floats from the kitchen out into the warehouse the next minute.

Dobbs, sitting in a loose flannel shirt behind the cash register, said, "Butchers want to break down that stereotype that good quality meat is only a privileged product."

Dobbs said that people could come in and say they just stopped being vegetarian or say they've never made steak before, and the guys behind the meat counter wouldn't be condescending or snobby.

Among the traditions with customers the place has created in the last few months is that customers having their birthdays have to drink whiskey. Also, those who ask for a bizarre cut of meat must down a gulp as well.

Not all requests are as neat as others. Among some of the strangest requests, according to Bigelow, have been tons of diced chicken breast and a single sandwich.

A line of Polaroid shots of those customers who have asked for strange meat slices lines the side of the refrigerator.

Michael Wiener, a customer, said that last fall he would pass by The Meathook in the evening while workers were sitting outside drinking beers in the midst of building The Brooklyn Kitchen. They'd invite him over for a drink.

Wiener called The Meathook "grassroots-y" and said the place had a "fun energy" that was "palpable and natural."

He said it's a bit over priced, but he likes the atmosphere.

Turley said that he has felt like less of a commodity, and more part of the community since the store opened.  The Meathook ingrained itself in the community quickly.

He mentioned an older couple that comes down from Queens every couple of weeks. "I can't help but give them stuff," he said. "They were some of our first customers, and so I'm endeared to them."